As long as our orientation is toward perfection or success, we will never learn about unconditional friendship with ourselves, nor will we find compassion.

The past is gone, the future is not yet here. Live in the present moment with awareness.

We can learn the art of fierce compassion - redefining strength, deconstructing isolation and renewing a sense of community, practicing letting go of rigid us-vs.-them thinking.

Should you desire the great tranquility, prepare to sweat white beads.

The development of insight is gradual, but the realization of truth is sudden.

The willingness to empty ourselves and then seek our true nature is an expression of great and courageous love.

Anxiety and excitement are the same emotion. The only difference is our attitude toward the experience.

Intrinsically all living beings are Buddhas, just as ice and water are of the same substance.

True love is not for the faint-hearted.

The purpose of our lives is to be happy.

Meditation is not about achieving anything. It's about letting go of everything.

May all beings be happy, be peaceful, be liberated.

Study the Buddha's teaching which is present in every moment.

Metta is the ability to embrace all parts of ourselves, as well as all parts of the world.

Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is relax.

Study how water flows in a valley stream, smoothly and freely between the rocks.

The more you suffer the deeper grows your character, and with the deepening of your character you read the more penetratingly into the secrets of life.

Karma is not fate but the law of moral causation, showing us that we are the architects of our own destiny.

The Buddha's teaching is not a philosophy or a religion; it is a method of practice.

Dependent origination is not a theory about the origin of the world but a teaching that shows how suffering originates in dependence on our own mental processes.

The practice of meditation is like tuning an instrument. Too tight, and the strings break. Too loose, and they won't play.

Faith is not a commodity that you either have or don't have - it is an inner quality that unfolds as we learn to trust our own deepest experience.

Just as the great ocean has one taste, the taste of salt, so also this teaching and discipline has one taste, the taste of liberation.

The problem is not the problem; the problem is your attitude about the problem.

Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.

The more you give, the more you have. That's the economics of kindness.

Zen proposes its solution by directly appealing to facts of personal experience and not to book-knowledge.

Real freedom is not about controlling our experience, but about being free within our experience.

The basic idea of Zen is to come in touch with the inner workings of our being, and to do this in the most direct way possible, without resorting to anything external or superadded.

We do not "come into" this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree.

You will not be punished for your anger; you will be punished by your anger.

True happiness comes from a sense of inner peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved through cultivation of altruism, of love, of compassion.

The more we understand the nature of our mind, the more we understand the nature of our world.